Page 1 of Guarded By the SEAL

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PETRA

“Oh, my goodness, where do you keep everything in here?” Looking through my husband’s office has never been fun. Jake’s paperwork has no system, and it drives me crazy. I like to have everything in a special order, and I don’t understand how he isn’t the same. “Don’t lose your head, Petra. Don’t forget that marriage is all about compromise and accepting one another and… ah! Here it is!”

What the hell?As my eyes run over the words on the page, I start to realize that this is not what I’ve been looking for at all. Instead, I’m pretty sure it’s something I’m not supposed to see. I know that I shouldn’t look, but I’ve already seen my name on the page, and my father’s, too. Whatever this is, I need to know. My father might be somehow linked to Jake’s business, not that I’ve ever really understood how, but I’m not. I shouldn’t be mentioned on any page at all, so what the hell is this?

I start reading slowly, taking in every single word, but the more it sinks in, the quicker my eyes go. I need to take it all in right away before I get swallowed up by the document, before it eats me alive. Everything that I thought I knew falls apart as I allowthe words to wash over me. The life that I’ve been living over the last few years all dissipates into nothingness. My life zaps away.

“Oh, my God.” I don’t know what to say, never mind what to think. “Oh, my fucking God.”

Jake is not the man I thought he was. He’s… evil. How can I be married to a monster and not know anything about it? How am I only just finding this out now? This one document has shifted everything entirely. I thought Jake loved me, that he chose to be married to me for a reason. I didn’t know that he did all this research on my and the family’s finances beforehand. I didn’t know that it was all part of a scam.

My father comes from money, old money. I guess we’ve always been wealthy. My dad always told me growing up to be wary of people’s intentions. He thought they might like the money more than me, but when Jake swept into my life two years ago, just after my twenty-first birthday, I could have sworn that he wanted me and only me. He never seemed to care about the money, which is why I agreed to marry him after only seven months of dating. But now… now, it seems that he’s linked to some dodgy organization, I don’t know enough to think criminal, but I guess so, and it was never about me.

“You are an idiot,” I scream to myself. “Why did you let this happen? What now?”

I’m petrified, so scared that I could fall apart, but fear won’t get me anywhere, so I allow the terror to transform into anger. That, I can use. There must be more here than just one document. There has to be more for me to discover, so I’m going to tear this fucking place apart until I find it. No way I’m letting Jake scam my family out of money. Not a chance in hell. He can piss off if he thinks that.

Tears run down my cheeks as I pull all the paperwork out and toss it all over the floor as it isn’t what I’m looking for. I couldn’t be angrier. I might have suspected in the past that Jake isn’t one hundred percent on the right side of the law with everything, but I didn’t know it could threaten me. I didn’t know my family could lose everything because of him. I think of my father and how this will kill him while I search.

“You asshole.” My feelings ebb away. The rose-tinted glasses associated with love vanish the more I look around. The life that I thought I had, the happiness I thought we shared… it all descends into a deep, black hole. I thought that Jake and I had the world at our feet. I married him thinking that it would be forever. Now, I don’t think I will ever be able to trust again. “You fucker!”

This has to be a nightmare. It can’t be real. I’m going to wake up in my bed in a moment and realize that it was all just my brain constructing nonsense out of nothing. Life will return back to normal soon enough.

“Holy shit.” At least, that’s how I feel until I see something which crushes me. It literally kills me. The air rushes from my lungs, which makes my head spin with an intense dizziness. “Oh, my God.”

Jake really isn’t the man I thought he was. He couldn’t be less of the nice man I thought him to be. Evil is the right word. Shady doesn’t even cover it. The man is involved in a sex trafficking ring and he wants to sell me to it. The evidence is right here in front of me. Once he has bled my father dry of his money, he intends to sell me off. His own goddamn wife. He hasn’t ever loved me, has he? He’s never even given a shit about me. I’ve just been a toy to him, and if I stay here, I will become a toy to everyone.

I drop the piece of paper like it’s on fire and race up to the bedroom. I know that I’m not thinking straight. I don’t know what the hell I shove into the bag to bring with me, but I know that I need to go. If Jake finds out I know about his plan, then he’ll speed things along and sell me off immediately. I will be screwed.

No, I’m not letting that happen. No way. I’m leaving and running away. Fuck that guy.

I still can’t focus as I run out of the house. I can barely see a damn thing of the building where I thought that I was building my forever home with the man of my dreams. I got married assuming that it would be forever. I thought that we would have children and everything here. I never assumed this might happen.

Then again, this isn’t exactly a normal outcome, is it? I don’t think anyone could plan for this.

There is only one place I can go, one person I can turn to in all of this. My father. He’s the only family I have. My mom died when I was very young, and he hasn’t ever remarried, so I don’t have any siblings or anything. It’s always been just me and my Dad, and the way that things are looking, that’s how it’ll always be.

Jake knows where my dad lives, so this won’t be a permanent solution. I can’t hide out at his place forever, but since I don’t know what else to do, I’m hoping that my father can help me. I need to drive fast…

“Dad.” I explode through his front door with my heart in my mouth. I don’t even know how I got here in such a state, to be honest. It seems pretty unbelievable that I made it with my head all over the place, especially since I got myself all worked upeven more so on the way. But I’m here and that’s the main thing. “Dad, where are you? I need to talk to you. Oh, my God, Dad, I need to talk to you right away.”

He emerges from his office with his eyebrows pinched together in confusion. I immediately leap into his arms and sob against his chest, the fear that has been dancing inside me finally breaking free.

“What is it, Petra?” There is a guarded tone to my father’s voice which has me wondering if he has been expecting something like this to happen. Maybe he was more switched on to Jake than me.

“Dad, Jake doesn’t love me. He’s after the family money. He wants to sell me to some sex trafficking ring, and I’m scared. I need to get away. If he finds out that I know, he might kill me.”

I shudder violently. All the nice memories that I have of Jake are now lies. The last two years of my life have all been for nothing. They haven’t even been real. I must be the biggest, most gullible idiot ever.

“You need to get away.” Dad didn’t even ask for evidence. He was probably suspecting this more than me. “I can’t look after you here, much as I would love to protect you. It’s problematic. He could find you here. Plus, one of us needs to be here to make sure that this doesn’t spiral into something even worse.”

“So, what am I going to do?” I cling to Dad hard. “I’m scared. How can I get away?”

“I have a friend, Max,” Dad confirms with a sharp nod. “He runs a brilliant security business. He has safehouses and men who can protect you. For the right price, I can get him to look after you.”

I want to ask Dad if he has already planned for this outcome, if Max already knows about me, but I’m too scared to know the truth. If Dad has been thinking that this might happen for a while, then I really am the last to know, aren’t I? I’m the fool who still thought that my marriage was real when everyone else knew the truth. I’m messy and raw enough at the moment without making it worse.

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